Nail Art: Creating Stripes

Stripes are fun, gorgeous and eyecatching and there are many ways to create them on a nail. There are two ways to do this.

Firstly, paint the stripes freehand – to do this will take a special thin nail art brush, a steady hand, and lots of practice!

Secondly, use tape to create the stripes – here’s how.

Prepaint the nail with the undercoat and first coat, let it dry, and then cut stripes into a piece of masking tape or sticky tape, or else use special nail tape which is very thin and adheres to the nail. Place the tape on the nail and paint the polish over it.

Once you have painted over the tape, remove it immediately before the nail polish dries. You should be left with beautiful stripes!

You might find that you have a few areas you need to touch up to make the stripes perfect – if you do this, you should use a special small nail art brush, or you could even use a toothpick for tiny corrections.

Another way of making stripes is to paint a thick layer of nail polish onto a piece of plastic. Let it dry, peel the polish off the plastic, cut the stripes out, and then apply them straight on top of a wet top coat of clear varnish so that they stick. You can tidy up the nail by using nail polish remover, which will dissolve the stripes in the places you don’t want them. Then finish off with a final top coat to seal the nail.

Practice makes perfect, so experiment with different materials to find the one that works best for you. Here’s a tutorial to help you.